Any Boy but You (North Pole, Minnesota)

by Julie Hammerle

  He’d been playing Wizard War for almost twenty-four hours now and the side effects he’d come here for—distraction, numbness, a powerful sense of control—had worn off.

  He exited the game and leaned back in his desk chair, running his hands through his gnarly hair. He hadn’t slept. He hadn’t showered. He’d only eaten the food his sister brought him, when she remembered to bring him anything. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t hungry, and his taste buds were dead.

  Oliver flipped over his phone and reread the messages Elena had sent him a few hours ago. She wanted to talk. She knew about the kiss.

  Well, so what? The kiss was the problem, wasn’t it? Her knowing about it didn’t change the fact that it had happened.

  “Oliver?” His dad knocked on the door and entered without waiting for a response. Trip wrinkled his nose as he stepped over the threshold. “It’s a little…ripe…in here.”

  Oliver folded his arms across his chest.

  “Have you left this room once today?”

  Oliver scowled at his father.

  “I want to talk about what happened.” Trip perched on the edge of Oliver’s bed, the bed he hadn’t slept in all night because he’d been on the computer, trying to forget about the kiss his dad wanted to chat about now. “I wasn’t lying when I said the kiss didn’t mean anything, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t stupid.”

  Oliver reached back, his finger hovering over the mouse pad on his computer. He longed to open up Wizard War again, just to get away from this conversation, to escape. He caught himself, though, and spun around to face his dad. “You’re right. It was stupid.”

  “I was having a rough night, what with your mom filing for divorce and everything…” Trip scratched the top of his head. Oliver wondered if his dad used to run his fingers through his own hair, back when he had hair, during nervous moments like Oliver did. “I know the divorce is the right thing. Don’t get me wrong. It’s just…I’m not good at failure.”

  Oliver raised his eyebrows.

  “And the failure of my marriage coupled with the failure of the business, it was a lot for me to take all at once.”

  “The business isn’t a failure,” Oliver said. “Or, it doesn’t have to be. I read most of Mrs. Chestnut’s plan. I think it could work. At the very least it’s worth a try.”

  “That’s off the table,” Trip said. “I kissed Tom’s wife. He’s never going to agree to a partnership now.”

  “Like you said,” Oliver reminded him, “the kiss meant nothing.” Though, was that even possible? Didn’t kisses always mean something to someone? They didn’t have to mean “true love” or even “I like you,” but they might mean “I’m lonely or sad or happy” or “I just needed to feel something tonight.”

  “Tell that to Tom Chestnut.”

  “Are we still moving back to Florida?” Oliver asked.

  “I don’t see what other choice we have.”

  “We could stay here, try to make the business work. You don’t give up on things, Dad.”

  “I think this time I have to.” Trip stood and patted Oliver on the hand. “I know your sister makes fun of you for it, but maybe you have the right idea,” he said. “Keep your head down, and focus on the work. Avoid drama. I envy you, Oliver. You’re much stronger than I am.”

  Trip left the room, closing the door behind him. Oliver swiveled around to face the computer. Out of habit, he opened the Wizard War window. His dad envied him. His dad envied a guy who’d been holed up in his room all day playing video games. He envied a person who hadn’t showered in twenty-four hours because he was too busy forcing himself into a state of numbness.

  Yeah, that was enviable.

  The truth was maybe Oliver had had it all figured out, maybe his system had worked perfectly, but only before he started chatting with proud_hoser and learned what he was missing. Once he’d let her into his life, his plan to remain emotionally anesthetized was ruined. He couldn’t go back. He’d spent a whole day trying to go back, and it wasn’t working. He was no longer an unfeeling robot. The Tin Man had grown a heart.

  Oliver read Elena’s texts again, and wrote, “Let’s talk.”

  He deleted it. He couldn’t just text her. That was the cheap and easy way out. He blew her off last night without explanation. And even after he did that, she was the one who reached out to him. She’d already texted him twice and he’d ignored her. A message wouldn’t be enough. It wouldn’t prove to her how much she meant to him or how desperately he wanted this to work or that if she let him kiss her, it would not be meaningless for him. Kissing Elena would be Stash Grab plus Wizard World times a million. Kissing her would be everything.

  He called Harper, and she answered after the first ring. “You asshole.”

  “I know,” Oliver said. “But I need your help. I’m going to make things right. Or at least less wrong.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  When Elena arrived at Santabucks the next morning just before six, Craig and Dinesh were the only ones there, aside from Jamison, the barista. The two guys sat at a table together in the back corner of the café, shoulders hunched over their large mugs of steaming black coffee.

  Elena nodded to them. “You ready for this?”

  Dinesh squinted against the glare of the rising sun. Two gray bags had settled beneath his eyes. “Four more hours.” With shaking hands, he lifted his cup to his mouth and sipped, like the coffee was his last remaining tether to the living world.

  “D and I were up late last night, planning our attack,” Craig explained. “The leader board went dark at midnight, so we have no way of knowing who’s winning at this point. There’s a long road ahead, and we’re going to win those tickets.”

  “Good luck,” Elena said.

  “You don’t mean that,” said Craig.

  “No, I don’t.” She wandered over to the counter, ordered her own black coffee, and checked the time on her phone. It was now five minutes until six. The final four hours of Stash Grab were due to start at six on the dot, and Harper was late. Elena was about to text her best friend that she wasn’t going to wait around for her, especially not when Harper was the one who had insisted Elena show up at Santabucks at five-fifty, when the door to Santabucks opened, and Harper hobbled in.

  Waving, she yelled toward an idling pickup truck near the curb. “Thanks for the ride, Sam!” Harper struggled, juggling the door, her crutch, and a cone-shaped package. Elena hopped up and gave Harper a hand with the cone.

  “What’s this?” Elena asked, examining the parcel.

  Harper hobbled to Elena’s table and motioned to Jamison that she’d like her regular order, thanks. “That’s for you,” said Harper, pointing to the package. “Open it.” Harper, smirking, folded her arms across her chest while Elena, brow furrowed, unwrapped the cone.

  Elena’s heart stopped when she saw what was inside. A yellow rose. One perfect yellow rose. She dropped it onto the table like it had burned her. “What’s this about?”

  “I think you know,” said Harper, who accepted her to-go vanilla latte from Jamison.

  “I don’t want it,” Elena said.

  “Fine.” Harper shrugged. “No skin off my back. I only promised I’d give it to you.”

  The loud scraping of chairs against linoleum cut through the quiet café. Dinesh and Craig shot up, shoved on their coats, and bolted from the store without a word of goodbye to anyone. Elena checked her phone. It was six o’clock. The final stretch of Stash Grab had begun. She glanced at her friend’s busted foot. Harper was only going to slow her down. Elena would never win the plane tickets if she had to help Harper limp around town.

  Harper caught Elena staring and said, “I know what you’re thinking, and I don’t blame you. I’m a liability. Leave me here. Save yourself.”

  “I’m not going to abandon you.”

  “Yes, you are,” Harper said. “I’m finally totally over Regina, and I need to work on my lady-flirting skills.” She winked at Jamison, the cute barista with the
short, black hair. “It’s why I asked you to meet me at Santabucks anyway.”

  “Thanks.” Elena saluted her friend, grabbed her coffee, and started for the door.

  Harper stopped her. “Your rose,” she said.

  “You keep it.” Elena took one last glance at the perfect yellow bloom. “I don’t want it.”

  Main Street teemed with Stash Grabbers, more than Elena had seen in a while. The final push for Stashes had motivated everyone to start grabbing again, even those near the bottom of the list. Elena studied her screen. There was a Stash right across the street in Frosty’s Dye and Trim. Elena trudged into the barbershop, shaking off her boots on the way in. Don Patrick, AKA Frosty, waved to her as he swept up some hair clippings.

  “You’re open early,” said Elena.

  “Stash Grab,” he said, holding up a finger. “I have something for you. Wait a minute.”

  Elena rolled her eyes as she caught the easy twenty-five point Stash in the shop. She didn’t have time for this. Don probably had a coupon or something for her to give her dad to entice him to come back for a haircut.

  When he returned, Don was holding another yellow rose, just as perfect as the last one. Had Oliver seriously placed a rose in every single North Pole store? Did he really think this would be enough to win her trust? He had stood her up and then ignored every single one of her texts. He had some nerve. “This is for you,” Don said.

  She accepted it, then dumped it in the garbage can right outside the store.

  Elena ducked into Santa’s Suit Dry Cleaners next door. There she caught a one-hundred-point Stash and grabbed a caramel bull’s eye from the candy dish. Mrs. Ra, the owner, produced yet another yellow rose from under her cash register.

  “That Oliver’s a nice boy,” Mrs. Ra said.

  “I don’t know about that.” Elena stared at the bloom lying on the countertop.

  “He likes you a lot.” Mrs. Ra grinned. “He was running all over town with these roses.” She nudged the flower toward Elena, who made a move to grab it.

  No. So he put a few flowers in a few stores. Anyone could do that. It didn’t prove that he wouldn’t bail on her again when things got tough.

  “You keep the rose,” she said.

  Feeling a sense of dread, Elena marched into the flower shop. But there were no yellow roses to be found there. Elena relaxed.

  “I told the Prince boy I wouldn’t sell him any flowers,” said Bobbi Moore, with a pinched face.

  “Good for you.” Elena clicked on a Stash and answered the seventy-five-point question.

  “His game has been nothing but a nuisance.”

  “That’s right, it has.” Elena shoved her phone into her pocket. She turned toward Bobbi, who was now struggling to hold a massive bouquet of yellow roses that had apparently materialized out of thin air. Elena backed toward the door, the oppressive scent of roses clogging her nostrils. What was Oliver trying to do to her? Wear her down? She backed toward the door. A couple of flowers were not going to sway her. She was tougher than that.

  Bobbi stepped around the counter. “He showed up at my house last night and fixed my broken fence. Then he offered to create a new website for my business, not that I need one. Computers are pure evil.”

  Elena really did not have time for a lecture on the great electronic menace. She had Stashes to catch. “Thank you, Bobbi!” Her hand searched for the door handle.

  “Wait,” Bobbi said.

  Against her better judgment, Elena did.

  “Oliver said he knew how much I hated the game and how loath I’d be to help. He told me he never would’ve come to me if it weren’t an emergency.” Bobbi held the flowers out to Elena. “Take the flowers, hon. He wrote you a note.”

  Sighing, Elena wrapped her arms around the unwieldy bouquet. Bobbi held the door open as Elena left the shop. On the sidewalk, for one quick second, Elena considered dumping both the flowers and the card in the trash, but she caught herself. It couldn’t hurt to read what he’d written. It wasn’t like his words would change anything.

  She set the flowers on the ground and opened the card. The message said, “Dear Elena, I can’t make up for what I did. I should’ve called. I should’ve texted. I definitely shouldn’t have shut you out. I’ve spent the past two days regretting standing you up. I thought I could go back to retreating into my games and hiding behind the computer, but I can’t. I miss you. You’ve ruined me.” There was a smiley face after that. “I understand if you can’t forgive me, but I hope the flowers, at least, bring you some joy. Kick all the ass at Stash Grab today. Love, Oliver.”

  Elena’s eyes scanned the crowds rushing up and down Main Street. When she realized she was hunting for a thatch of auburn hair, she shook some sense into her brain. This changed nothing. She picked up the flowers and hurled them and the note into the garbage can next to Bobbi’s flower shop. Elena checked her phone. There was a Stash in the bakery.

  She caught that one and accepted another rose from Dottie, which she tossed in the garbage on the way out.

  Then Mr. Wong in The Chinese Restaurant gave her a flower. So did Maurice in the video store, and Reverend Michaels in the church. Each rose went into a trashcan on Main Street.

  Needing to clear her head, she ran all the way to the edge of town and into Ludlum’s Grocery Store. She caught a quick Stash in the feminine hygiene aisle, and rolled her eyes when Gretchen Ludlum, whose dad was the grocer, presented her with another rose.

  “Keep it, Gretchen.”

  Elena had gone to the back of the store to grab a bottle of water, when a voice startled her.

  “Fancy meeting you here.”

  She turned toward the voice. There was her dad, holding one of the refrigerator doors open.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  He pulled out a carton of milk and held it up. “None left for cereal,” he said. “What are you doing out so early?”

  Elena winced. “Stash Grab. Last day.”

  Her dad shook his head.

  “So…how are you and Mom doing?” She hadn’t seen either of them since the store yesterday. They were sleeping when she got home last night, and were still in bed when she left this morning.

  Her dad grinned, and the dread in Elena’s stomach melted. “We’re okay. We’ve decided that both of us, for our health, should stay as far away from Trip Prince as possible. I think I’m finally at peace about the whole situation.”

  Elena glanced up as the door to the grocery store opened and in walked Oliver Prince and his father. “Latch on tight to that peaceful feeling,” Elena said through gritted teeth.

  Her dad spun toward the door, and, when he spotted Trip, gripped the milk carton so tight Elena feared he’d burst it all over the refrigerated section of the grocery store. Elena patted her dad’s hand. “Breathe in. Breathe out.”

  Trip marched toward them, on a mission, and Oliver followed behind, his hair flopping against his face. He glanced up when he reached Elena, and his eyes went right to her hands, which were empty. “You’re not catching Stashes today?”

  “Oh, I am,” she said, folding her arms. She avoided his gaze, because she knew his eyes would make rejecting him almost impossible.

  He frowned. “Has anyone given you…?”

  “Roses?” she asked. “They sure have. I don’t want them, thanks.”

  “I was here first, Trip,” said Elena’s dad as he boxed out Trip Prince, preventing him from getting to the freezers. Glad for the distraction, Elena turned her back on Oliver.

  “I’m just picking up some ice for the Stash Grab event.” Trip elbowed Tom Chestnut out of the way and flung open the freezer door.

  Clearly, this store wasn’t big enough for the both of them. “Dad, let him get the ice,” Elena said.

  “That stupid game.” Tom rubbed the spot on his ribcage where Trip had just jammed his elbow. “Thank God it’s almost over. Nothing but a pain in the ass.”

  “Says who?” Trip frowned.

  “Lots of people,” Tom s
aid. “Bobbi Moore.”

  Trip laughed. “Bobbi Moore! You can’t go by Bobbi Moore! Everything bugs her.”

  “Did you stop by Bobbi Moore’s store this morning?” Oliver whispered from behind Elena.

  “Yes.” She waved him off and focused hard on their fathers. Oliver seriously did think a few flowers and one little note would be enough.

  “Bobbi has some very valid complaints about the game.” Tom folded his arms.

  “I’m sure she does,” Trip said. “Bobbi’s full of complaints.”

  Tom chuckled, his eyes softening, but he stopped himself quickly. Elena couldn’t help smiling, but she forced herself not to turn toward Oliver, even though she wondered if he was wearing a similar grin.

  Trip, his eyes on Tom, said, “Hey, remember when we’d play baseball in your backyard and our balls would land in her shrubs?”

  “Only once in a while,” added Tom with a little eye-roll. “We were pretty good at keeping our stuff on Chestnut property.”

  “That we were.”

  Now Elena did turn around. Oliver’s mouth had dropped open, and she knew what he was thinking. Their dads were talking in normal, almost friendly tones. She and Oliver were watching a miracle happen. Elena held her index finger to her lips. Don’t ruin it.

  “Ha,” Trip said. “But whenever we’d hit one into her yard, Bobbi would come over and shriek at us.”

  “I don’t want your balls near me!” they yelled in unison.

  Everyone in the store spun toward the back.

  Tom straightened his shoulders and cleared his throat. “It was always your fault,” he said. “You were the one who’d hit into her yard.”

  Trip narrowed his eyes. “You’re just jealous that I could hit farther than you.”

  “Bullshit,” said Tom.

  “Not bullshit.” Trip stepped toward Tom.

  “I’d miss the ball on purpose to make you feel better, because you sucked at baseball.” Elena’s dad scrunched up his face and pretended to cry. “Poor Trip, always sad when someone beat him at something.” He glared. “You could never handle losing, as a kid or as an adult.”